The Pit (The Bugging Out Series Book 4) by Noah Mann Page A

approach to almost any situation.
    “What is it?” Neil asked.
    She glanced quickly to him, but gave no answer, nor any hint of explanation.
    “Let’s get back to the boat,” she said.
    Neil looked to me, then turned the thermal binoculars back on once more, about to bring them to his face when Elaine seized his arm.
    “Let’s just get back to the boat,” she reiterated.
    Her grip remained on his arm until he turned the device off once again and stowed it in its case.
    “Come on,” Elaine said, then started back long the point’s sloping southern face on her way to the shore.
    “What the hell did she see?”
    I thought on my friend’s question, but I had no specific answer. No real guess, either. What Elaine must have focused in on across the water had to have disturbed her without raising any real fear. We’d all seen so much already that I wondered what might have affected her the way it had.
    “Are you coming?” she asked, pausing to look back when Neil and I hadn’t yet moved from our position on the point.
    “Yeah,” I said.
    I looked to my friend, and he started off, following Elaine. A moment after him, I did, as well. Back at the dinghy we pushed off and paddled back to the Sandy .
    “What is it?” Schiavo asked as we climbed back aboard.
    Enderson and Hart stowed the dinghy and listened for an answer to their leader’s question. None actually came.
    “We can go on,” Elaine said.
    Schiavo puzzled briefly at the oblique reply.
    “It’s safe,” Elaine assured her, offering everyone on deck a quick look, her gaze finally settling on me. “I’m sure.”
    She walked away then, heading into the wheelhouse and below deck.
    “That’s not what I was expecting,” Schiavo said, looking to me.
    It wasn’t what I’d anticipated, either, but I didn’t share that with the lieutenant. Instead, I added my assurance to that of Elaine.
    “If she says it’s all right, then it is.”
    My own promise, offered in the blind, was enough to move Schiavo, if not convince her entirely.
    “Acosta, get us moving.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Sergeant, I want shooters on the bow.”
    “Westin, Enderson, warm up your trigger fingers,” Lorenzen said, carrying out his lieutenant’s order.
    “Elaine wouldn’t say it was safe if it wasn’t,” I told Schiavo.
    “I had friends who were told the same thing before they were blown up while meeting with tribal elders in Afghanistan,” Schiavo said. “So it’s a good idea to be ready to kill anything you see.”
    She said no more, simply taking the thermal binoculars back from Neil and joining Acosta in the wheelhouse.
    “I hope this doesn’t go south,” Neil told me.
    “Yeah,” I said, then joined the others in the wheelhouse as the Sandy started to move.
    *  *  *
    W e pulled around the point and into the channel. Immediately we all could see the light ahead, flickering small in the darkness.
    “Keep us at a distance,” Schiavo ordered.
    “Yes, ma’am,” Acosta acknowledged.
    He steered the Sandy right, hugging the eastern shore as close as he could without grounding her on the bottom displayed on the boat’s instruments. Just forward, through the windows, I could see Westin and Enderson kneeling behind the low, solid rail that surrounded the bow. They had their M4s up and ready, eyes to the compact scopes mounted atop each. They would see only minimal definition at this distance. Schiavo, though, would take in a much clearer picture as she brought the thermal binoculars to her eyes and activated them.
    Just a few seconds later she lowered them and looked to me. Just a dim glow from the instruments filled the wheelhouse. Hardly enough to see by. But in that wash of muted light I could tell that some of the color had drained from the lieutenant’s face.
    “She was right,” Schiavo said.
    The lieutenant handed the binoculars to Lorenzen and went below decks. He scanned the scene she’d just appraised and leaned out the wheelhouse window and told